Another Day of Ups and Downs for El Toro Plan

A regional growth panel voted overwhelmingly Thursday in favor of building one of Southern California’s largest commercial airports at the closed El Toro Marine base, while at the same time federal officials were warning that the proposed airport might need to be redesigned.

A six-county body that controls the flow of federal transportation money in Southern California approved a sweeping 25-year blueprint for regional growth Thursday that shifts the onus of airport expansion from Los Angeles to Orange County and San Bernardino County.

The Southern California Assn. of Governments voted 38 to 2 to limit Los Angeles International Airport to 78 million passengers a year, while an airport at El Toro would handle about 30 million passengers by 2025. Ontario International Airport, used by about 7 million passengers last year, would grow to the same size as El Toro.

The dissenting votes came from Laguna Niguel Mayor Cathryn DeYoung, who opposes a new airport at El Toro, and Stacey Murphy of Burbank, who questioned estimates of 9.4 million passengers a year at that city’s small airport.

While the association, known as SCAG, has no direct authority over airport projects, it determines how and where federal money is spent for associated improvements such as roads and utilities. If an area is out of sync with SCAG’s plans, it could lose federal transportation dollars.

But Federal Aviation Administration officials testified Thursday that squeezing more flights into Southern California--where airspace is already some of the nation’s most congested--will be difficult, especially with an airport at El Toro. SCAG has estimated that the region’s air travel demand will peak at 158 million passengers in 2025.

“Use of El Toro by commercial traffic is expected to require development of new procedures which may prove to be difficult for departures to the north,” Joe Sinnott, an FAA consultant with the Mitre Corp., said Thursday.

Orange County officials want to send about 150 flights a day to the north after takeoff from El Toro, a plan opposed by airline pilots unions for safety reasons. An analysis by the Mitre Corp. determined that airspace to the north of El Toro was too saturated to absorb new flights.

Even with redesigning airspace procedures, finding a way to handle northern flights from El Toro “may be difficult to come up with,” Sinnott said.

The appearance of the FAA consultants underscored SCAG’s more aggressive approach in the past year to regional aviation planning. The FAA has agreed to join SCAG in undertaking a comprehensive airspace analysis within the association’s six-county region, comprising Orange, Los Angeles, Ventura, San Bernardino, Riverside and Imperial counties.

“This is the first time in the nation that a metropolitan planning organization is looking at airports as an integrated system to solve its airspace needs,” Sinnott said.

The final results won’t be known for at least two years, said Rich Macias, SCAG’s aviation planning manager. Meanwhile, the FAA has completed a separate airspace analysis of El Toro, which is expected to be released this month.

Some at Thursday’s meeting questioned other aspects of the plan, despite general agreement that LAX shouldn’t grow much more.

Sandra Balmir, a transportation planner with the Federal Highway Administration, said the plan relied too heavily on the idea of a high-speed train to move passengers between LAX and Ontario. There is no funding for such a train, and SCAG members questioned whether it would ever be built.

DeYoung was booed by the audience after she challenged the group’s authority to tell local governments what projects they can build. She said SCAG was reacting to “what’s good politically” instead of relying on good planning.

“The reality is, [El Toro] is not going to be built,” said the South County resident, referring to efforts by airport foes to pass a countywide measure on next March’s ballot that would replace El Toro’s airport zoning to that for a park.

Most of the speakers were from neighborhoods around LAX who were opposed to that airport’s expansion. Their neighborhoods have done enough, they said, to live with the burdens of the airport, which was designed for 40 million people but which last year handled 67 million passengers.

“We’ve got to have south Orange County carry their fair share,” said Mike Stevens of Inglewood, who heads a group called LAX Expansion No. The group wore T-shirts Thursday proclaiming, “El Toro Yes!”

“When they built those luxury homes down there, they knew they were under a flight path” from the former Marine base, Stevens said.